Do you believe in aliens and flying saucers?

So this thread builds on the highly successful ghosts thread to ask if you believe in aliens/extraterrestrials, flying saucers/UFOs and such like.

Personally, unlike ghosts, I am a skeptic and remain to be convinced of the existence of intelligent life out there in space. Now obviously there are UFOs in the sense that they are unidentified flying objects, but whether they are alien craft or not is another matter.

As such, let's debate it here in this thread and try to replicate the success of my ghosts thread. Here's hoping! :D

Comments

If you take in the enormity if the universe then it seems a shoe in - even if you say there is a 1 in million chance of intelligent life, that's a pretty good odds, just due to the sheer size of the damn thing.

I certainly believe there is something G else out there. As @royale65 says, the size of the universe etc, there just has to be more than usallon this planet. I'm positive there is other life out there.

1)Alien as in extraterrestrial life form, possibly intelligent, as other people said just for the sheer size of the universe it is very plausible. 2)Flying saucers as in aliens visited us? No. It is not entirely impossible but unlikely it happened and there is no evidence for it.

I'm inclined to assert that the possibility of extra-terrestrial life is incredibly large, even within our own solar system. However,

1) How do we define alien life? Do bacteria count? In that case, alien lifeforms are practically sure to exist. If, however, we focus on intelligent alien civilisations alone, i.e. civilisations smart enough to communicate via radio-waves, the chances are drastically reduced.

2) However, the chances are still not zero in my opinion. Assuming all life must be carbon-based and somewhat similar to life on Earth, the physical and chemical conditions to be met by planets and moons, if life is to be sustained, are fairly strict. A precise 'configuration' of all sorts of physical and chemical paramaters is the key to life; it is, however, also a rather exclusive configuration, making it highly unlikely that advanced civilisations exist anywhere in our cosmic vicinity. Still, with the universe comprising hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one containing hundreds of billions of stars, here and there, life is bound to exist.

3) But intelligent aliens have most likely never visited Earth yet. One mustn't forget that it takes light several years to cross the distance between our solar system and the one closest to us. The laws of physics make it furthermore very difficult for us to travel at close to the speed of light. Even civilised alien societies are highly unlikely to achieve this goal. As such, unless we take into account the equally far-fetched possibility of using wormholes or some such thing, crossing the vast distances between solar systems and galaxies requires on average a particularly large amount of time. At the same time, the universe might not even be old enough yet for enough sufficiently advanced civilisations to have come into being for intergalactic travel to be statistically relevant.

To believe there can be sophisticated life on other planets is not ridiculous. To believe they are sophisticated enough to challenge the law of physiques and reach us, is ridiculous I'm afraid...

I always find it curious how we seem to take it for granted that if there is life elsewhere they somehow have to be even more intelligent than us. It kind of downplays the achievements of mankind quite considerably. Just take some time to think about how far we have come. It is quite extraordinary to say the least. But even we have more or less given up any aspirations of visiting other galaxies. It is quite simply completely unrealistic.

"life elsewhere they somehow have to be even more intelligent than us."

Careful there, we have no benchmark on a universe basis of what intelligent is. Just because we are "top of the class" on this tiny little dot, means little on a wider scale. Humans have been around for a tiny amount of time. On the basis that we develop at the same rate, imagine if we had got going a million years early. Considering the age of the universe and when we got going, its more likely that aliens had a headstart on us.

Linking with the other thread, we cant even agree on what our own reality is yet. We are toddlers IMHO The fact that we struggle to imagine aliens more intelligent than us is itself a sign that we have a long way to go and we are still pretty arrogant, vain and self centred.

"life elsewhere they somehow have to be even more intelligent than us."

Careful there, we have no benchmark on a universe basis of what intelligent is. Just because we are "top of the class" on this tiny little dot, means little on a wider scale. Humans have been around for a tiny amount of time. On the basis that we develop at the same rate, imagine if we had got going a million years early. Considering the age of the universe and when we got going, its more likely that aliens had a headstart on us.

Linking with the other thread, we cant even agree on what our own reality is yet. We are toddlers IMHO The fact that we struggle to imagine aliens more intelligent than us is itself a sign that we have a long way to go and we are still pretty arrogant, vain and self centred.

I am all for an existencial debate about what constitutes proper intelligence. That is not the point of this thread though... To assume that any life form, just given time, would be able to inhabit space the way we have is far fetched in my opinion...

Anyway the distances in space are far too big for any interraction between civilizations.

I think we have to consider whether Darwin's thory would apply universally rather than just to Earth. I need to read more but my gut reaction is that species fight for survival and, therefore, they advance in accordance to Darwins theory. The more intelligent species will survive and thrive. So it is an assumption but based on how we have observed life grow here so not sure if it is far fetched as the other alternative assumption is that alien life does not evolve.If thats the case, then we either have alien life at the most basic, one cell level or we have to have some other form of life creation? I'll go with Darwin every time,

In 1987 I was in the navy, and we were patrolling the North Sea. One night when I was assigned as the lookout on deck, the sky was a magnificent sight to behold, so I gazed upwards for some time.

Suddenly two parallell strong lights were visible high in the sky, going with an amazing speed. All of a sudden, and simultaneously, both changed their projection course by maybe 130-140 degrees, going by memory, and shot away out into infinity.

I never understood what that was, and never saw anything like it before or after.

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